


It's Running You With Red

by JustJasper



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Bathing/Washing, Blood Magic, Communication, Confession, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Sending Crystals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 14:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15342039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustJasper/pseuds/JustJasper
Summary: After the Commutatus Ultima, there's blood in the water.





	It's Running You With Red

**Author's Note:**

> Did you know David Gaider wrote a [not-officially-canon Dorian piece where he talks to his father](https://medium.com/@davidgaider/the-final-conversation-d6258fa6cbdb)? Now you do, and you should read that before you read this, as it's a sequel.
> 
> Consider reading [Home Is Such A Lonely Place](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8720506) afterwards, for a thematically similar story if you want to continue to suffer.
> 
> Writing mood: [Bon Iver - Blood Bank](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-BZ0D92mtU)
> 
> Thank you [Nele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nele/works) for betaing.

**“One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.” - Alain de Botton**

The blood is dry on his hand when he touches the sending crystal. A broad stroke of his thumb, though it’s not this that really makes a connection, but the will, the want, the need to hear a voice.

The light of the crystal pulses for a few minutes before it settles. That voice, warm and excited, the grin clear in the sound of it.

“Hey, kadan.”

“Didn’t interrupt anything, did I?”

“Was just running a bath. Gonna use that fancy soap you left,” the Bull purrs.

“I’d wondered what happened to that. I hope you’re planning to use your horn balm afterwards, I don’t want your horns to rub my hands raw again the next time I see you.”

His hand, palm up on his dressing table, the wound glaring at him.

“Hmm. Come get a bath with me,” the Bull says.

Dorian hums thoughtfully. He’s alone now, with an otherwise quiet evening of dull correspondence ahead of him.

“Alright. Are you still in Orlais?”

“We’re heading out on a new job tomorrow, enjoying the facilities while we can.”

The bath is sunken into the floor, the same black marble, gold and serpent stone as throughout the estate. The sending crystal hangs loosely on its chain around his neck, bumping against his chest as he turns the taps. Through the crystal, Dorian can hear the Bull milling about similarly.

“You should see the size of this tub. Enough room to really spread.”

“That only leads to a lot of water everywhere except in the bath itself, if I recall. You getting in? Mine’ll be a few minutes.”

“I’ll wait.”

Dorian slips out of his robe, wonders whether the Bull is already naked. He could ask; it wouldn't be the first time a mundane evening had taken a turn for the sordid on little more than a question posed, but—no, not now.

There's a distinct _plop_ , and then a distant muffled “shit”, and Dorian laughs. Waits a moment, until he hears the sound of the Bull climbing into his bathtub.

“Did you just drop an incredibly rare and valuable sending crystal in the bath?”

“Hey, it's waterproof, right? Not going to ruin the magic?”

“Hardly the point.”

He climbs into his own bath, sighing at the prickling heat as he lowers his body in. He aches, now that he lets himself feel it. The ride home after their eluvian adventure made for bruises on bruises.

“Oh, I needed that.” Dorian groans, long and low.

“How did it go today?”

Dorian's hand stings in the hot water.

“Uneventful, as far as funerals go. Some chatter about whether my claim to his seat is legitimate. After all, it was no secret that he'd disowned me. My status as a Magisterium-appointed ambassador to Orlais has helped, however.”

“They can't contest it, can they?”

“Not really. Individuals could make a fuss, and I suppose if there was a coordinated move against my succession they might stand a chance, but my father was well liked amongst moderates, and my alliance with the Inquisition affords me a measure of protection. The Magisterium want to appear like its cooperating with the rest of Thedas.”

“All while they scheme, huh?”

“Nothing outright hostile. It's a game of undermining any influence Thedas attempts to have over politics here, and of having Tevinter come out on top of negotiations.”

In the water, his hand has begun to bleed again. He watches the blood swirl in twists and tumbles, shifted by the sway of the water, spreading from his wound. Remembers blood in the basin at an Inquisition camp, remembers the Bull telling him the first time he saw blood magic on Seheron.

It's always blood, in the end.

“I spoke with my father.”

“You did?”

“ _Commutatus ultima_. An old ritual. Quite illegal, but traditional all the same. Letters can be forged, wills contested, this is meant to offer clarity. My father made the preparations, I needed only to complete it.”

The pause is too long, too knowing.

“Right.”

“The cost was blood.”

Silence. The magic of the crystal hums in the quiet, fuzzy like the edge of sleep, alive like the distant crackle of brush fire. He wonders, does the Bull hear it too?

“Mine, you understand.”

“Dorian...”

His name now, not an endearment. He had expected that, but it stings all the same.

“I used my blood to speak with him one last time.”

The Bull sounds calm when he speaks again.

“Was it worth it?”

“I'm not sure yet. He was himself, though I'm not sure how much of him it really was. Some kind of echo, through our blood connection. He spoke of his legacy and vengeance, as I thought he would. He also spoke of regret, which I didn't expect.”

He can hear the sound of the Bull moving in the bath, of his breathing. He pictures him soaping himself with a cloth in slow, measured strokes. How he longs to see his face – would he have have let him see his anger, his disgust, his disappointment, or would he have guarded it?

“What did you do?” the Bull asks, voice gone quiet.

“Hm?”

“The ritual. Your blood.”

“Oh. It's necromancy, but still requires blood. Sometimes necromantic spells do. I learned such things, when I was studying. Only a prick of a finger, only one’s own, but it’s the magic of life, and of death. A necromancer would say he is different from a blood mage, but, it’s semantic to most. Blood is blood, and any magic that deals so much in death as necromancy is bound to it.” His mouth has gone dry, and as he swallows, finds his breath, the Bull stays silent.

“And as my father and I were unfortunately related by blood, it required that link. I wrote sigils in the dust at the dais, spoke the incantation, and cut my hand. If my father hadn't prepared for the invocation, nothing would have happened.”

“So, like you make a corpse dance for you in a fight?”

What he wants to say is: _please don’t think of Seheron._

The mage had been young, wild-eyed and cornered. A few paces too far to stop it, she cut deep into her hand, and the Bull had watched her pull demons through the corpses of her fallen comrades, surrounding them, rending his men apart like starving dogs.

The visuals of the story might be a thing of fancy, but the pain on the Bull's face in the retelling – he's never forgotten it.

Instead, he says: “I know you always hate when I do that.” It feels inadequate. “But no, not like that. None of the spells I use with any regularity require blood. What I called back wasn't a spirit, not my father proper, not anything whole.”

“How do you know it wasn't a demon?”

“That's not what the incantation summons. It called upon something my father left behind – an echo of himself.”

“So, like your simulacrum?”

“Similar, I suppose.”

“Alright,” he says, thoughtfully.

The simulacrum had been a whole thing, of course – the Bull, when they were beyond nights of passion but not quite _this_ , had asked about his magic. Fascinated, though he wouldn't readily admit to it. Afraid, too. Dorian had walked him through it; showed him the sigils, drew them in chalk on his floor slowly. The Bull hadn’t run, when the thing had formed upon the sigils, a shimmering purple echo of Dorian. Hadn't trusted the magic, that was clear, but trusted Dorian with it.

Dorian touches the crystal at his chest, closes his eyes just to listen to the Bull breathe. Savours it. He lets the silence stretch on for moments, the weight of dread potential there over his heart, an anchor around the neck of hope.

“Do you think we'll still meet in Antiva at the end of the month?”

“You think I wouldn't want to see you, now you've confessed to using blood magic?”

“Frankly, yes.”

“Well,” the Bull says, sighs like he's settling back against the side of the bathtub, “I'd be a liar if I said I didn't mind, or that I wasn't pissed. You're an idiot. Not just mad at you, though; wish I'd punched your dad like I wanted to at Redcliffe all those years ago.”

Despite the weight on his chest, that startles a laugh out of Dorian.

“We were barely anything back then. You didn't even know what he did.”

“I didn't know the full story, but I made enough logical leaps. He made you feel shitty. And now he's done it again, from the damn grave.”

“He asked my forgiveness, in time. I always denied him absolution from the terrible choice he intended to make for me, and I always wonder if I'd forgiven him, if he'd have seen it as leave to begin again the circular insistence that I live out the life he had planned for me. This was soothing for himself to prepare it, as much as it was for my benefit, I imagine.”

His anger serves nothing – his father is dead. Forgiveness cannot serve his father now either, and he may never be willing to offer it.

“It's over now, then? Funeral stuff?”

“Yes. He'll be cremated and entombed tonight.”

“Okay. No more, Dorian. I don't understand magic, and I don't know where the lines are or if they mean anything. No more blood magic shit. Nobody else can know you did this.”

“Maker, of course. I debated whether I should tell you, even.”

A burden that the Bull never asked to carry. A terrible thing to know, to have the distance between one's lover and the enemy shrink.

“Why did you?”

“I've never lied to you before. To start now, at the very beginning of a lifelong—”

He catches the noise before it truly forms, but the tears he would not allow himself in the mausoleum with the echo of his father fall now, lost in the heat and the steam of the bath.

“Kadan, hey—”

He presses his hand to his mouth – he had prepared himself not to hear that word again for a long time, filed it away somewhere where he could feel the hurt later, privately mourn his own part in its absence.

“Hey, come on, don't cry,” he gentles.

“I'm not crying!” A lie, so soon after he said he never would. The Bull lets it pass.

“I said I was pissed with you, not that I don't love you anymore. I'll meet you in Antiva like we planned, and every time after that. Gonna take a little more than cutting your hand to scare me off.”

“Just like that?”

“Yeah, kadan. You could have _not_ done the thing, but your dad could have just written you a fucking letter telling you to avenge him, too. I know you Vints like to be dramatic.”

“We have a flair for it.”

“Look, if between now and then I start feeling antsy about it, we'll work it out. Anything that still needs to be said, we can talk about when we’re together. I just want you to be safe.”

Dorian can't promise he'll be safe, they both know – it's Tevinter, and politics can be deadly. But he relaxes – for a man named a liar by the Qun, the Bull is the most honest Dorian knows.

“Amatus, I've no plans not to see you in Antiva. Your horns better be in top shape when I see you, or I'll be cross.”

“You'll be cross, huh?”

“Oh yes.”

The blood in the water has dispersed, and his hand barely even stings.

**"You can’t save people, you can only love them." - Anaïs Nin**

**Author's Note:**

>  _That secret that you know_  
>  But don't know how to tell  
> It fucks with your honour  
> And it teases your head


End file.
